It's really amazing how many fans have undertaken to make their own Trek. And the varieties ... prose, comics, audio, video, games, models, ... seem unlimited.

It was driven home to me this week when Kirok L'Stok pointed me to a major animation I had missed entirely... one which was started in 2006. It's not that I'm truly surprised, I knew perfectly well there are, and were, websites I had not searched. But the number of successes is even more startling when you see how many fail for each one which succeeds.

I removed four more Fan Film Makers With No Fan Films from active to hold or abandon status today. All had shown no activity in a year or more, and two had websites that had been down for over a month and whose former addresses were now available. Another had shown no activity since 2007, and no progress since 2005. I also marked several others for possible removal in a few months. In films, at least ten try for every success. It looks like on my one year anniversay in early June, I will have followed just two would-be filmmakers who actually made new films, and eliminated well over 20 that had abandon their projects.

Thank you for your wonderful efforts.

I know that there are some who feel my listing of dramatic film projects only, with a focus only on non-comedy, non-parody which are in excess of 10 minutes, tell an entire story, and are not crossovers, porn, or music videos, is not a broad enough listing. Let me invite anyone who wants to create a broader listing to use mine as part of the basis on which your broader listing can be created. However, doing what I am already doing is either more than I can handle or all I can handle. I mean no disrespect to the other creative talents in the Trek community.

I know that there are some who feel my listing of dramatic film projects only, with a focus only on non-comedy, non-parody which are in excess of 10 minutes, tell an entire story, and are not crossovers, porn, or music videos, is not a broad enough listing. Let me invite anyone who wants to create a broader listing to use mine as part of the basis on which your broader listing can be created. However, doing what I am already doing is either more than I can handle or all I can handle. I mean no disrespect to the other creative talents in the Trek community.

Just as the best fan films are the result of a number of individuals who focus on doing-what-they-do-best I believe that Trek fandom is better served by having a number of individuals who focus on their own specialty for critique.

There are a number of websites that offer critique on fan films but the two that standout are your own Star Trek Reviewed and Randy Hall's Fan Film Friday on SciFiPulse. You are far too modest, Barb! You've spotted some material that I've missed (not hard to do!) and have the determination to follow up on the details.

I wouldn't worry too much about not reviewing everything. For example Sebastiaan van Mierlo does an excellent job of focusing on music videos on his Final Frontier Media website where he not only reviews them but has them available for download! Likewise a new audio drama Blog has started up - strangely enough named, "Audio Drama Review" - although he is still working his way through the production groups.

What we are missing is a non-partisan reader of fan fiction to point fans to noteworthy fiction now.

What we are missing is a non-partisan reader of fan fiction to point fans to noteworthy fiction now.

Cheers

K

That would be a LOT of work. I suspect there is as much fan fiction as there is everything else combined. I would think that that would have to be broken down into bite sized peices... TOS era (which I call "Golden Age") ENT era (Which I call "Stone Age") and TNG, DS9 and VOY era (which I call Silver Age). Even that might be three tasks each of which is too large for one person.

Just as the best fan films are the result of a number of individuals who focus on doing-what-they-do-best I believe that Trek fandom is better served by having a number of individuals who focus on their own specialty for critique.

There are a number of websites that offer critique on fan films but the two that standout are your own Star Trek Reviewed and Randy Hall's Fan Film Friday on SciFiPulse. You are far too modest, Barb! You've spotted some material that I've missed (not hard to do!) and have the determination to follow up on the details.

I wouldn't worry too much about not reviewing everything. For example Sebastiaan van Mierlo does an excellent job of focusing on music videos on his Final Frontier Media website where he not only reviews them but has them available for download! Likewise a new audio drama Blog has started up - strangely enough named, "Audio Drama Review" - although he is still working his way through the production groups.

Cheers

K

You have done an outstanding job of surveying what's out there... or should I say out here? I'm delighted to be able to refer people to specialists in other areas, and you have done a great job of providing those links.

Randy and I communicate regularly. We take very different approaches, but IMHO, that only adds to the value. Even though it was my intention to write reviews that were viewer oriented, I think Randy does a better job of that than I do. My reviews are more 'literary criticism' ... reviews that the filmmakers themselves seem to like. I tell people that a positive review from me will get the filmmaker and extra 50-500 views, while a negative review from Randy will bring them an extra 100-5000 views... and ten times that many if his review is positive. All of those numbers are not meaningful to the major fan film groups, but when you look at some good films that have been viewed by significantly under 10,000 people and have been out for years, those numbers are meaningful for the less well known film makers.

I do think that, once people get into fan productions, they can be gotten to try other formats, whether that's fiction, audio, comics books, or whatever. But they need that initial good experience. My first fan film was Star Trek: Intrepid, which is still among my favorites. Had it been one of the films I list under "Really, really bad stuff," ... or some of the films rated 1 or even 2... I might never have watched another, and I'd have missed out on some wonderful creations.

One criticism I received stated that I was implying that every film was better than every audio production by just covering films. That is certainly NOT my intention. My intention is to just sort the films. My intention is to say, they are apples and oranges. If I commuted to work, I'd be making CDs out of the audio productions and listing in the car after getting the traffic and weather off the radio. At the moment, I work out of my home. But that could change in the next few years... and I know what I'll do if it does!

The problem, and I think Barb touched on this, is that the field is so massive! There must be literally thousands of Trek fan fictions released every week spread over dozens of archives, forums, message lists, websites... Ad Astra, FanFiction.net, The Guardian of Forever, TrekFiction, Trekiverse (the website of alt.startrek.creative)...

What is needed is...

Someone to post a notice of fan fiction that is released, say on a weekly basis, with links to them

Someone, or some group, to post reviews of the releases

Why not just get the list owners of the different repositories to post their new releases as Captain X used to for The Guardian of Forever? Far be it from me to discourage anyone from doing the same, but ideally it would be better for some external party to do it since then you can be assured of a fuller coverage and smaller groups will not be swamped by the more extensive posts of, say FanFic.Net.

By the same token, why say "an impartial reader"? Its not as if people post biased reviews, its more to make sure that good fiction does not get missed because the author or listowner is not good at publicising their work. In this respect, that is why alt.startrek.creative is so good, they put a big emphasis on commenting on work.

As an experiment, I've started a weekly fan fiction posting thread HERE, what do you think? If you subscribe to this thread it will be an automatic update of new fan fiction. There's much more scope for expanding on this.

I'm just now learning how to use a wiki - but maybe instead of trying to undertake a project insurmountable to one person (or even ten!) we should really support the use of this wiki as a way to try to gather the fan fiction info...???

As soon as I figure out how to use it, I will be adding my stories and my characters to it...

The problem, and I think Barb touched on this, is that the field is so massive! There must be literally thousands of Trek fan fictions released every week spread over dozens of archives, forums, message lists, websites... Ad Astra, FanFiction.net, The Guardian of Forever, TrekFiction, Trekiverse (the website of alt.startrek.creative)...

What is needed is...

Someone to post a notice of fan fiction that is released, say on a weekly basis, with links to them

Someone, or some group, to post reviews of the releases

Why not just get the list owners of the different repositories to post their new releases as Captain X used to for The Guardian of Forever? Far be it from me to discourage anyone from doing the same, but ideally it would be better for some external party to do it since then you can be assured of a fuller coverage and smaller groups will not be swamped by the more extensive posts of, say FanFic.Net.

By the same token, why say "an impartial reader"? Its not as if people post biased reviews, its more to make sure that good fiction does not get missed because the author or listowner is not good at publicising their work. In this respect, that is why alt.startrek.creative is so good, they put a big emphasis on commenting on work.

As an experiment, I've started a weekly fan fiction posting thread HERE, what do you think? If you subscribe to this thread it will be an automatic update of new fan fiction. There's much more scope for expanding on this.

In a word, I've seen it, but by the time I found it I knew it's Fan Film article was both incomplete and out of date, and it's internal search engine didn't do the job of even locating fan films that were listed.

It's a tool, certainly. And I think listing your fiction there is an excellent idea.

Maybe I should create a listing for my website?!! Frankly, I find Wikis intimidating. I tried to edit a listing to Wikipedia once based on my personal knowledge of an event being discussed... I was an eyewitness. They required a third party source, actually being there was not a good source!

In a word, I've seen it, but by the time I found it I knew it's Fan Film article was both incomplete and out of date, and it's internal search engine didn't do the job of even locating fan films that were listed.

It's a tool, certainly. And I think listing your fiction there is an excellent idea.

Maybe I should create a listing for my website?!! Frankly, I find Wikis intimidating. I tried to edit a listing to Wikipedia once based on my personal knowledge of an event being discussed... I was an eyewitness. They required a third party source, actually being there was not a good source!

Huh. Well I have yet to take the tutorial on how to use it. It is very intimidating. I will see how it goes.

In a word, I've seen it, but by the time I found it I knew it's Fan Film article was both incomplete and out of date, and it's internal search engine didn't do the job of even locating fan films that were listed.

Some Wikis are better than others and I think it mainly depends upon the administrators and the contributors. The ST Expanded Universe Wiki is by definition a fan-friendly venue, which makes it the polar opposite of Wipedia which is about as fan-UNfriendly as you can get.

It's a tool, certainly. And I think listing your fiction there is an excellent idea.

I agree, a well formatted page on ST EU will be a great reference site for followers of your work

Maybe I should create a listing for my website?!! Frankly, I find Wikis intimidating. I tried to edit a listing to Wikipedia once based on my personal knowledge of an event being discussed... I was an eyewitness. They required a third party source, actually being there was not a good source!

Which was why I withdrew from supporting the Star Trek Fan Productions wiki page that I created in 2006 after the great WikiWar of '07 when it was lobotomised.

K

Huh. Well I have yet to take the tutorial on how to use it. It is very intimidating. I will see how it goes.

From memory, the actual mechanics of editing an article is pretty simple, the complications arise from formatting, links, graphics and such.

I only recently discovered Expanded Universe and the organization seems pretty solid to me (I've spent probably a bit too much time exploring it, really). And I think any Wiki is only as up to date as the people who maintain it are able to make it, in this case the fans which makes this one a bit unique and maybe more interesting. I've found several things in terms of fan productions on EU that I hadn't heard of otherwise, but have the feeling that it does only scratch the surface of what's available. My fan media consumption goes in cycles with audio being the most consistent as I've got a commute that's the best part of an hour each way.

Listing your fiction or review site? Absolutely. Anything that increases exposure for good work is a good thing, in my opinion.

If I can get Fractured Unity off the ground (and I will!), I'm thinking an entry there would probably be a good idea.